1. Field of the Disclosure
The disclosure generally relates to computer programs executed on computing devices, and more particularly to debuggers for detecting errors in the computer programs.
2. General Background
Software debuggers have assisted many computer programmers in finding errors in their computer programs. These errors are generally referred to as “bugs”. The most common bug is a computer program not doing what it is supposed to do. Finding bugs can often be a cumbersome task for a computer programmer.
One of the difficulties is that a bug may manifest itself long after the computer instruction that caused it was executed. For instance, a first computer instruction may perform a calculation to output a result that is not used by a second computer instruction until millions of instructions after the first instruction was performed.
If the bug is a “reproducible bug”, a computer programmer can usually use a debugger to quickly determine the immediate cause of the bug. One of ordinary skill in the art will recognize the term “reproducible bug” to mean a bug that manifests itself in the same way every time a program is executed with the same input.
A debugger can be used to help determine the cause. However, traditional debuggers have limited capabilities. Using a traditional debugger often takes a programmer days or weeks to find bugs that take a long time to reproduce or that are not reproducible.